irs – Opportunity Zones – Insights From the Land of OZ

February 15, 2022 by Brad A. Molotsky

OZ Filing Deadlines Approaching – Make sure to connect with your tax filer on who is doing what!

Friends and colleagues, a quick reminder which you are likely aware of, but in the “let’s be sure” category:

2021 QOFs – If you created a QOF (a Qualified Opportunity Zone fund) in 2021, your first tax return will be due in 2022, likely next month on March 15^th . Reminder that it is critical to file the Form 8996 with your filing or the IRS will NOT treat you as a fund and the OZ will not work for your project or your business. IMPORTANT to review with your tax filer.

2018, 2019 and 2020 QOFs – for QOFs formed in 2018, 2019 and 2020, you will have your normal annual compliance filing with the IRS for the QOF; please again make sure you have clarity with your tax filer on who is filing this required piece of paper.

Personal Tax Filings for the Investor – if you have invested in a QOF in 2021, then you need to file with the IRS a Form 8997 that advises the IRS that you have invested in a QOF along with a deferral election form which will effectively defer your tax on your OZ eligible investment until 12-31-2026. These forms should be filed with your personal tax return on April 15, 2022.

Note, if you are involved in deals with lower tiered QOZBs (Qualified Opportunity Zone Businesses), the QOZB does not need to file anything with the IRS but (and a big BUT), they do need to do compliance testing on June 30th and December 31st of each year and report such testing to their QOF. Please make sure this is occurring for your investments.

Apologies for being slightly over protective of you here but a few QOFs and investors in the past have missed these deadlines or their accountant was not aware that they were supposed to be filing the relevant form. As such, we wanted to make sure you all get your signals straight and that we avoid any crossed OZ wires.

Duane Morris has an active Tax Credits and Opportunity Zone Team to help organizations and individuals plan, respond to, and invest in Opportunity Zones and low income areas throughout the USA, including the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico using tax credit equity and standard equity. We have closed over 173 OZ deals since their inception and are actively working on over 34 OZ projects for owner/developers, investors and business owners at the moment. We would be happy to discussion your proposed project with you.

Contact your Duane Morris attorney for more information. Prior Alerts on the topic are available on the team’s webpage.

If you have any questions about this post, please contact Brad A. Molotsky, Art Momjian, Scott Gluck, Lee Potter, Anastasios Kastrinakis, or the attorney in the firm with whom you are regularly in contact.

Take care and stay safe.

June 5, 2020 by Brad A. Molotsky

IRS issues new Opportunity Zone Guidance and Provides Additional Time and Flexibility

Thanks to the urging of Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), the IRS issued revised guidance in Notice 2020-39 and provided some additional flexibility for Opportunity Zone investors and Qualified Opportunity Zone Funds.

The key take aways are as follows:

1. EXTENSION OF 180-DAY INVESTMENT PERIOD: Under the OZ regulations, an individual who realizes a gain, is required to invest that gain into a QOF within 180-days of realizing the gain (or such other date as outlined in the regulations). The new relief provides for the 180-day investment period to be automatically extended until December 31st, 2020 if it would have originally expired after April 1st, 2020 and before December 31st, 2020. Example: If any individual realized a gain on 12/15/2019, their investment period would have expired in May, 2020. That date is now automatically extended to December 31st, 2020.

2. EXTENSION OF 90% TEST FOR QOF: Under the OZ regulations, a QOF in required to invested 90% of its assets into qualifying opportunity zone property within 6 months and at the end of the taxable year (i.e., December 31st for a calendar year QOF). If the 90% test is not met, then the QOF is subject to penalties on a portion of the funds in the QOF. The new relief provides that if either the first 6 month testing date or the final year end testing date occurred between April 1st, 2020 and December 31st, 2020, then the failure to satisfy the 90% test is deemed to be due to reasonable cause and, as such, no penalties will be levied.

3. EXTENSION OF 30 MONTH SUBSTANTIAL IMPROVEMENT TEST: Under the final OZ regulations, one of the way tangible property qualifies as qualified opportunity zone business property is to meet the “substantially improved” test within 30 months of acquisition. The new relief provides for a tolling of the 30-month period beginning April 1st, 2020 and ending December 31st, 2020. In other words, properties that are acquired during or that have previously been acquired within an opportunity zone after 1-1-18 and which are under construction will be provided with an additional 9 months to satisfy the substantial improvement test.

The Notice also discusses the 12 month reinvestment requirement upon a sale and the up to 24 months of additional time under a “working capital plan” for properties located within federal declared disaster areas (note, all 50 states and Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and Guam have been declared federal disaster areas in connection with COVID-19).

If you have any questions or thoughts, please do not hesitate to reach out via email or text to my cell. Best regards and be well.

A copy of the IRS Notice can be found here – IRS Notice 20-39

Over and out from the Land of OZ. -Brad

November 6, 2019January 6, 2020 by Brad A. Molotsky

House Legislation Would Establish OZ Reporting Framework and Penalties; Senate Bill Would Limit Application of OZs

While impeachment discussions continue to garnering most of the headlines, Representatives Ron Kind, D-Wis., Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Terri Sewell, D-Ala., introduced legislation in the House to establish a reporting framework, disclosure requirements and a penalty structure for qualified opportunity funds (QOFs).

Their Bill, the “Opportunity Zone Accountability and Transparency Act”, would mandate that QOFs annually report assets; their aggregate amount of qualified OZ stock, OZ partnership interests and OZ business property; and provide details about the types of OZ businesses for which the QOF holds business property. According to Novogradac, the legislation would also institute a $500 daily fine for failure to file correct information and would require the Treasury Department to collect and compile statistical information on each OZ, including the number of QOFs that have invested in each OZ.

Across the way in the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., introduced the “Opportunity Zone Reporting and Reform Act”. Senator Wyden’s bill would require information reporting from qualified opportunity funds (QOFs), end the designation of some 200 different opportunity zones (OZs), clarify some terms used in the OZ incentive and require a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the effectiveness of the incentive.

The Senate Bill would require QOFs to report in 9 areas, including:
– providing information on the amount and composition of assets, the names and taxpayer identification numbers (TINs) of investors along with the amount and dates of their investments;
– which opportunity zones the funds have invested in;
– the value of qualified OZ stock, partnership interests and business property;
– the value of any tangible or intangible property held by the QOF;
– the NAICS code of any Qualified Opportunity Zones Businesses (QOZBs) conducted by the fund or any corporation or partnership in which the fund holds an interest; and
– for QOZBs conducted by the fund or by a controlled corporation or partnership, the value of tangible and intangible property (including cash) and the average monthly full-time employees of the QOZB.

The Senate legislation, if enacted, would also end the OZ designation for all “contiguous zones” (a change that was added in the April 2018 regulations) that were named OZs, but which are not low-income and would define the term “substantially all” to mean “not less than 90 percent.” (i.e., effectively changing the QOZB asset test from 70% to 90%). The legislation would also require QOFs to make their reports public on the Internet and would require that the IRS maintain a public list of all QOFs.

The Senate legislation would also expand the application of “sin businesses” to disallow investments in private planes, along with skyboxes and luxury boxes. Prohibited investments would also be expanded to include sports stadiums, self-storage facilities, and housing developments that are un-affordable to existing zone residents.

While the proposed legislation would remove certain zones (approximately 200) as not being within what the Bill’s author believed to be in the spirit of the OZ legislation given the incomes and demographics that now are located within these “wealthy” zones, the legislation then allows states to designate an equal number of new zones which could be added to offset the lost zones. These new zones would remain on the same timeline as the zones originally designated in 2018, with their designations expiring at the end of 2028.

The legislation would also modify the Treasury letter ruling that did not require a QOF to include the value of land for purposes of calculating “substantial improvement” and would also impose a penalty of $10,000 on funds or investors failing to comply with their respective reporting requirements, with exceptions for reasonable cause. Penalties would be doubled for taxpayers found to be intentionally disregarding their reporting requirements.

While it is clearly too early to call whether these two Bills will move forward to a debate and/or passage, at the moment Republicans in the Senate are believed to be firmly against the proposed Senate Bill.

We will keep an eye on these proposed Bills and keep you apprised as things move, if they move on this front. In the meanwhile, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at bamolotsky@duanemorris.com.

–Brad A. Molotsky, Esq.